


Smoke and Shadow

by justanotherStonyfan



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Creepy, Gen, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 05:43:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8433940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanotherStonyfan/pseuds/justanotherStonyfan
Summary: After helping out following an Air Raid in London while he's on leave, Steve gets more than he bargained for.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was meant to be part of something larger but, as some of you know, I've recently been ordered by my doctor to stop typing or else contract Carpal Tunnel so, for now, this oneshot is my Halloween contribution.
> 
> Many thanks to Blodyn who's input made this happen.

Steve's on his way back to base in London after helping dig whomever they can out of ruined buildings following the latest air raid, hands shoved deep in his pockets, when he catches the guy in the shadows out the corner of his eye, down an alley on the other side of the street.

For a second, Steve almost misses him, but he stops, lifts his head and looks and the guy looks back at him. To begin with, Steve thinks this is some fella wanting a light, but those last few hit pretty close to the gas mains and the last thing they need around here's an open flame. He's halfway to telling the guy to stow his smokes when he realizes the guy looks ill or something.

“Hey, buddy, you all right?” he says, raising his voice a little – ain't much light on the backstreets and cobbles, just flickering yellow in the distance and a little more now the cobbles are wet. He feels odd about this, like he's missing something.

He gets the distinct feeling the guy needs help, but he doesn't step out of the shadows between the two buildings. Steve takes a step closer and starts looking for injuries, when he spots a cap, a flash of something at the shoulders as the guy sinks back into the dark a little – a uniform. Steve can't see much else besides the general features of a face from where he stands.

“Hey, kid, you a Brit or a Yank?” he says, and the guy, little more than a face, retreats out of the light just a little more, turns away.

Steve doesn't know what it is that worries him about this guy, but he's seen a lot more action since he was last in London and something bugs him about this, something's off in a way that isn't yet instinctive to Steve. 

But a thought occurs – maybe the kid isn't on leave. 

“Listen,” Steve tries. “I don't care why you're here, Pal, I ain't interested if you're UA. I just wanna make sure you're-”

The kid ducks into the shadows and is gone, and Steve doesn't know what to do with himself – there's something up, something Steve isn't getting, and some part of him knows it's bad. There's just something... _off_ about the kid, in a way that means Steve doesn't like the kid's chances.

“Wait,” he calls out, and he crosses to the mouth of the alleyway.

It's almost pitch black down there, smells of wet garbage and wet stone, but he walks down, nice and careful so as not to scuff his shoes, eyes adjusting as he goes. There's a turn at the end, ninety degrees right that Steve's maybe halfway to reaching, when something moves, and somebody says something – either to one side or behind him, soft like a whisper. 

Steve looks behind him and sees nothing – almost nothing, somebody's passing the mouth of the alleyway – but that whispering fades and then swells and when he looks back-

_“Christ!”_

-the kid's right there, maybe ten foot in front of him outta nowhere, wearing a Private's uniform, definitely a Yank.

Steve don't mind admitting he's surprised, don't mind realizing he needs a couple of seconds to get his breath back before he looks the kid up and down. He looks the way Morita carries a hangover – bad, pale, sweating, and Steve don't like it. It's a little like how a cold looks, or a bad meal the day after, when there's something up with you but it's hard to quantify.

What Steve finds even odder though is that his eyes aren't adjusting enough that he can read the guy's expression but he thinks, he _thinks_ the guy might be...smiling?

“Hey,” he says, takes two steps, and the guy steps back and disappears around the corner.

Steve rolls his eyes, follows, and comes face to face with a brick wall and two very full garbage cans and nothing else, and feels the hair stand up on the back of his neck. He looks up as he frowns, feels suddenly a lot less sure of himself. Brick wall. Solid, immovable, and very much not the kind of thing to let a human being through.

He clears his throat because, like a switch that's been thrown, the darkness is very close and the journey back seems fraught with danger, and his heart kicks up a notch or ten.

“Okay, I'm goin',” he says, because his mother told him that manners are applicable everywhere and there's no way, there is _no way,_ he can explain this, which means he really ought to make a good impression on anything that might be listening. 

He turns back just as every instinct screams at him not to, like a static charge pulling all his body hair backwards towards the plain brick wall. He has an absurd moment of if-I-don't-look-then-it-can't-get-me and goes back around the corner, before he puts every ounce of willpower he's got into walking instead of running until he steps back out onto the street.

Then he jogs. He jogs maybe three houses down until he feels that electric charge lessen enough that his body doesn't rebel quite as much when he tries to swallow . His blood isn't roaring in his ears quite as loudly and his own footfalls on the stone help to ground him – there's only one set of footfalls and he can feel the panic retreating with every thud of his feet against the ground. He feels like a fool.

He slows to a walk and breathes out hard through pursed lips once or twice, trying to offset the jump in his diaphragm, and runs a hand through his hair to dispel the prickling sweat that made his spine itch. The Fire Service are dealing with what they can of the fire but Steve had already been up seventeen hours when the air raid started, and he's been pulling people out of the rubble since it finished – some more intact than others. 

Not to mention the fact that he hasn't eaten since the evening – and this wouldn't be the first time his mind's made something out of nothing because it's overstretched. He and Dum Dum spent two hours in a foxhole only last month because Steve could see a sniper in an abandoned farmhouse up on the hill, and _that_ turned out to be a bush and an old pair of spectacles come daybreak.

That kind of thing, that half-dream confusion, especially after Steve's been breathing in smoke and brick dust on an empty stomach, that's the kind of thing he'll laugh at in the morning. He'll tell Bucky, maybe he'll even draw it for Bucky, and Buck'll roll his eyes, and Steve wonders if he'd even be able to find this street in the morning. He just needs to relax, get back to base and go to bed – the walk'll be good for his nerves, give him a chance to shake this whole stupid thing off. 

He glances back and the kid is standing there on the pavement at the mouth of the alleyway and Steve only has his silhouette to go on but, just for a moment, he could swear he can see its smile. 

He near swallows his tongue, heart skipping a beat the way it shouldn't in this body as his lungs seize, and he feels the heat of adrenaline shoot up into the back of his skull. 

This is a kid, it's just a kid playing a prank or confused about where he is, it has to be. The kid holds himself as though his right side's heavy, as though his right leg don't work right, and maybe he got caught in the air raid or something. Maybe this is somebody who needs help.

“Do you....” Steve calls out, and the words stick in his throat the first time “Do you need help?”

The kid doesn't move and Steve glances around, keeping the kid in his field of vision. There are no lights on this street – no lights in windows, not a soul on the road. The only answer Steve gets is his own tinny echo coming back off the wet stone.

Steve glances left and then right, looking for an indication of where he is – there's a road he can take to get back to a route with fewer houses and more traffic fairly soon, if memory serves. 

He's just thinking about taking it when the kid shifts, like he's stepping forward except his legs don't match the movement, and then something happens to him that even Steve's eyes can't track, as though the kid flickers out for a moment - and then he's closer, in the next shadow cast by the next house, moving forward, toward Steve with that smile on his face -

Steve doesn't even think, he just runs. 

He hangs the next left the main road takes and thunders along the sidewalk and tries to swallow his heart back down, tries to listen past the roaring blood in his ears and the jingle of the badges on his uniform and he can feel the terror creeping up on him like an unseen hand stretching out behind him to pull him back – he runs harder.

The flagstones are slippery and the air is starting to thicken with fog, and his right foot slips out but he doesn't fall, he just readjusts to run on the road and keeps going. The breath is starting to burn in his lungs, starting to force a dry sting in the back of his throat and he blinks hard when his eyes start watering in the smoggy air – there are lamps in the distance, he can see them, but they're small and weak. They feel like salvation from where he is; Steve's whole world is shadows and he keeps seeing movement out of the corners of his eyes and if he can just get to the lights then maybe he's got a chance.

He glances back over his shoulder, all he'll spare, but his brain processes what he's seen a moment later and he knows he saw movement, flickering black behind a railing, along a wall and it's closer behind him than he thought, it's only a few buildings away.

He prays, because that's what his Ma taught him to do, feet pounding stone as fast as he can make them, and his muscles burn, ache, but he's not giving in – the lights are closer and his vision judders as he runs on the uneven ground, he's just got to keep running.

He groans because he can't not, finds himself pushing past a limit he should be nowhere near but it feels like his limbs are made of lead, feels like he's running through molasses and it _hurts_ , each step like a knife up his shins.

Twenty seconds at the outside and he'll be under the lights, meager though they are, a he's got to do is keep going for twenty seconds and he'll make it – he hears himself, hears his own voice in his ears,

“Ah....God...” but if he just keeps-

His right foot slips out again and this time he stumbles, takes three long staggering steps forward before his hands hit the ground but he turns it into a roll the way Peggy taught him and comes up with bloodied hands and his knee feels cold and wet; he knows he's torn his uniform pants and could not possibly care less about it. 

Ten more steps, five, he crashes into the pole of the nearest lamp and grips it tight with one hand as he swings around and looks back, standing gaping in the dim circle cast on the ground as he wheezes, nose running, eyes streaming, before he coughs wetly into the fist of his free hand.

The street behind him looks empty, there's no movement, and he searches the sidewalks, the roads, has to double-check each shadow he sees because he's so paranoid now that they all look like viable suspects.

He presses his free hand to his chest as though he could calm his heart by feeling it, breathing hard with aching lungs, and there's no movement on the street behind him. He lets himself blink, wipes his eyes and then his nose with the back of his hand as he sniffs, lamp post still held firm in his other hand. He can feel the sweat on his forehead, on his face and neck, under his arms and at the backs of his knees and he still can't see anything moving.

He lets go of the post but only to hook his arm around it, leaning his forehead against cool metal as he shuts his eyes for a moment and tries to calm his breathing. Then he looks down – he's going to get in shit for tearing his uniform but he still doesn't care. 

He lifts his head as he starts to hear the air moving around him, the sounds of the world coming back to him – leaves on trees, water dripping somewhere – and stares down the length of the street to make sure there's nothing there. He holds his breath when there's something low down and black but it's the shadow of a cat or something, short and fast and nothing but a flicker behind a car before it's gone.

He squints up at the lamp above him and then regrets his decision, light-spots dancing in front of him, forming shapes that ramp up his tension just a little as he tries to clear his vision. They're really bright against the blackness behind him and, when he tracks what he thinks is a movement, all he sees is a great swathe of purple and green.

He shoves his knuckles up against his eyes and winces as the insides of his eyelids show him static, head beginning to ache, and then he looks over his shoulder to see how far the lights extend as his vision clears, and back down the street-

The kid is three houses down, in the middle of the road and he can see the weak light glinting off its teeth.

He can't help the startled cry he gives, or the way his whole body rears backwards, and the kid, this grinning, manic _thing_ tilts its head with a crack and flickers forward.

Steve backs up as fast as he can without taking his eyes off it, out of the circle of light he stands under, and doesn't stop until his back hits the next lamp post and then, then the kid flickers and jumps and Steve feels his heart stutter so hard he can't catch his breath. He'd hoped and prayed against everything that light was the key, that this thing couldn't get him if he just found somewhere bright to be. 

It stands in the downlight from the lamp not twenty feet from Steve, where Steve was standing not twenty seconds ago, and stares at him, eyes so deep that not even the lamplight can disrupt the shadow under its brow, hollow of its cheeks like dark pits in its face, and a mouth Steve had tried more than anything to keep his eyes from, but it's too late for that now – it doesn't smile, it's so far from a smile, and it holds itself there, crooked and staring with skin so pale Steve could swear its translucent.

And then leans forward and its too-wide mouth opens like a black void, slow, as though the whole world has narrowed down to this and stretched it out, and opens, and opens until its face should stop, until its jaw should unhinge, and then it moans, long and low, rising without stopping into a keening wail that rings in Steve's ears as as ice snaps down Steve's spine.

It flickers.

Steve runs.

He doesn't think, doesn't slow, doesn't look back, he just runs, toward every light he can see, taking every main street he can find and he can't hear anything beside that distant wailing cry, can't see anything in front of him except light and the memory of that face, and the flicker of shadow at the edges of his vision.

It's gaining on him, and he knows it. He doesn't know how long he runs for, doesn't know how far he gets, but he knows that he rounds corner after corner and can hear it in the distance, closer for a moment and then away, a crack off to his right that sounds like bone and then he staggers around a right hand turn next to a huge old building and the kid is standing in the middle of the dark, deserted road, thirty feet in front of him.

“No!” he gasps, staggering back, “Jesus!” and then he's almost knocked off his feet until a hand grasps his shoulder and he rears back to find-

“I say, steady on! Had a little too much, have we?” 

Steve gapes – four men, blue uniforms – RAF, and Steve looks back but the kid, that thing, is gone.

What's more, the road is lined with bright lamps, cars parked on either side, and there are people moving around on the sidewalks, there's the noise of life around him.

“Don't you know there's a war on?” says one of the other guys, and the whole group laughs.

“Where the hell am I?” Steve asks, and the first one – thick mustache and a raised eyebrow at his question – looks a little less amused.

“London, old boy,” he says, and Steve holds out a hand for balance as his body threatens to topple.

 _“Where_ in London?” he clarifies, and one of the others lifts his chin.

“Camden,” he says. “Whereabouts were you hoping for?”

Steve can't think of an answer, can't pull the answer out of the steady flow of racing thoughts in his pounding head.

He scans the road instead of answering, shaking his head. No sign of the thing – no sign of the empty road Steve knows he ran onto a moment ago.

“You're bleeding, Captain,” the fourth says, exchanging a worried glance with mustache, and Steve just shakes his head as he gapes down the normal street. “Are you all right?”

Steve takes a few seconds to register the words and then he looks at the fourth guy.

“What?” he says, and looks down. “I...”

“Captain, where've you been this evening?”

“Bombs,” Steve answers. “I was..after the raid we were digging people out over in...Houns...Hounslow?”

The men exchange glances.

“When was this, old boy?” mustache asks, and he sounds a lot gentler now, none of the four of them are smiling.

“I...after the raid,” Steve says stupidly. He looks back along the street. “What time is it?”

“It's a little after four,” the third guy says slowly.

Steve just stares at the guy incredulously, and then looks back at the road, not quite able to believe there are four other people with him, that there's light here and none of the shadows are moving.

“Captain, were you hit during the raid at all?”

“No,” Steve murmurs. “No, I...I don't...”

His sentence tapers off and he can't think of a way to finish it.

“All right,” mustache tells him, turning him back with both hands on Steve's biceps. “You look like you've had a rough night. Do you know where your base is?”

Steve swallows hard and nods slowly. 

“I...” he says. “Yeah.”

“Ainsworth, call it in. We'll sort this mess out, Captain, do you have a name?”

“It's Rogers,” Steve says. “I'm...I'm Steve – did you see anybody else down here with me? Anyone at all?”

The four of them exchange glances and then mustache steps a little closer.

“Didn't even see you until we bumped,” he says. “Wasn't even sure where _you_ came from – certainly didn't see anyone else. Your HQ have an infirmary?”

Steve nods, letting himself be turned, be walked away. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah they do.”

***


End file.
